Good book

I just finished a great book, called The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish.  The things I like about this book is the complexity of the plot, the weakness and vulnerability and honesty of the characters, and the messiness of redemption.  One quote I noted was when the one character feels the need to eat, not because of being hungry, "but for something to do to keep her from falling into the deep, deep moment between their words" (p. 188).  The author crafts her story with gems like these to find and delight in as the reader turns them about--catching the gleam of meaning from different angles of understanding.  "I have felt this way...even just yesterday," I found myself musing.

The one character is deeply wounded.  We read, "She was scared.  Her healing would come with a probing, painful cutting away.  She could picture it in her mind, hear Christ's knife scraping the rot from the bone.  Because that's where it was, in her bones, all sunk in and deep in the marrow.  She would have to allow God in there if healing was to come.  She would have to listen to Him say the word, watch Him snip away the sutures with which she had hastily, tightly, bound up the past.  She'd need to peer into each one of those gaping wounds, put her finger into them, confront the, and let them close up in the long, slow way these types of hurts close" (p. 293-294).  Again I had the thought of thinking that way just in the last day. 

It makes me think of the song "In The Light" by DC Talk: 
I keep trying to find a life
On my own, apart from you
I am the king of excuses
I've got one for every selfish thing I do
What's going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I'm still a man in need of a savior
I wanna be in the light
As you are in the light
I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens
Oh, lord be my light and be my salvation
Cause all I want is to be in the light
All I want is to be in the light
The disease of self runs through my blood
It's a cancer fatal to my soul
Every attempt on my behalf has failed
To bring this sickness under control
Tell me, what's going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I'm still a man in need of a savior
Honesty becomes me
[there's nothing left to lose]
The secrets that did run me
[in your presence are defused]
Pride has no position
[and riches have no worth]
The fame that once did cover me
[has been sentenced to this earth]
Has been sentenced to this earth
Tell me, what's going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I'm still a man in need of a savior 

I am so thankful for my Savior, Jesus Christ, who has taken on the disease of sin for all mankind, and once-and-for-all replaced it with health and life everlasting in my soul.